Dave Oliphant
Dave Oliphant was born in Fort Worth on July 18, 1939. He lived in Beaumont and is a 1957 graduate of South Park High School and Lamar University where he received a B.A. He graduated from the University of Texas with an M.A. and took the Ph.D. at Northern Illinois University. Dave and his wife Maria, a native of Chile, have been married for more than 30 years and have two children and two granddaughters. He has been at UT since 1976 teaching and coordinating the Freshman Seminars Program. UT Press published his historical study, Texan Jazz, in 1996, which was reviewed in the Star-Telegram.
JAZZ BOOK COMING SOON..... Dave is the recognized authority on Texas jazz. Click on the following link to read all about it.
Dave has recently created his rememberance of teachers at South Park High School. For classmates and former students at South Park it is a fond look back at some of the colorful teachers we were blessed to have in our lives..... Enjoy these high school memories....
Dave consciously began Memories of Texas Towns and Cities in the autumn of 1974 and finished it twenty-five years later in the fall of 1999. Some of the thirty sections of this epic-like treatment of Texas places, historical figures and contemporary friends, and readings in world and regional history and literature have appeared previously in Oliphant's earlier collections. Here after a quarter centruy is the complete Memories sequence, which brings together a wide-ranging picture of Texas through the places, people, and poetry one man remembers and celebrates.
Dave writes of our 20th high school reunion in a veiled but revealing way of classmates who graduated with us some 20 years before. A book of insight and sometimes poignant descriptions of early friends and life that every classmate can enjoy and treasure. …. db…..
The book is available through "amazon.com". …..
Maria’s Poems
Maria's Poems: "Maria's Poems is named for a sequence of nine poems Oliphant has written about his Chilean-born wife. Some of his Maria poems are as original as anything ever written by a poet to his wife."
Dave has received much acclaim and praise for his work as is reflected in the following comments:
James B. Hall writing in New Letters of Footprints, 1961-1978: "I look forward to more poetry of this kind from probably the most broadly gifted poet in Texas."
Michael Anderson writing in The Pawn Review of Lines & Mounds and Footprints: "The contribution of these books towards a body of uniquely Southwestern literature -- writing which could not have been spawned outside the region -- is immeasurable, though the poems are not regional in interest nor in impact. Instead, these poems represent a new movement in American poetry -- an increased concern for history, for culture, for 'place.'"
Lynn Hoggard writing in the Texas Writers' Newsletter of Footprints: "There is no poet now writing who has made so total, so deep and so sustained a search for the meaning of being a poet in Texas as has Dave Oliphant, and these meandering footprints range all over his homeland."
Don Graham writing in the Dallas Times Herald of Austin: "Resolutely committed to the practice of poetry, Dave Oliphant has for years edited anthologies of Texas verse as well as written ample quantities of his own. In numerous essays, he also has staked a claim to being a strong advocate for nativistic poetic voices and subject matter, which is another way of saying that in this time of shifting cosmopolitanism, he is a regionalist. Oliphant's new book-length poem, 'Austin,' carries forward this program on an ambitious scale. It is an attempt, in Texas terms, to recreate a work along the lines of William Carlos Williams' "Paterson," that is, a poem that relates the history of a place from the ground up, from origins to now... I find myself not being put off by the poem's density, but rather being drawn into it. Serious readers of serious poetry will find the book worth their attention."
Texan Jazz University of Texas Press; paperback, $24.95—This history of Texans in jazz history is available through amazon.com or UT Press.
The Early Swing Era, 1930 to 1941 Greenwood Press, $99.95— The volume is about 480 pages, hardback, with dust jacket and photographs included. Anyone really interested in the Swing Era and recordings of the time might want to consider this book for their collection. The book can often be found in libraries.
Dave can be contacted at the following email address:
doliphant@mail.utexas.edu